Rank: 54
Code: Red
(See Blandin Foundation interactive map)
Brown County: maybe some deployment will spur more
Brown County rank drops from 45 to 54 for broadband access out of 87 counties. They have 78.4 percent coverage to broadband of 100 Mbps down and 20 up. They have 2268 households without access to broadband at that speed. Estimates indicate that it will cost $21 million to get to ubiquitous broadband in the county.
| County | Residential Location Density | number of residential locations | ≥ 100 Mbps Download/20 Mbps Upload Speeds | unserved households | Cost to close gap |
| Brown | 17.0 | 10,498 | 78.4 | 2268 | 21092400 |
Brown County seems to have taken a slight bump backwards. Their ranking dipped as the percentage of coverage of broadband. That may change if Hanson Communications gets funding in the latest (still in process) Border to Border grant round.
Brown gets a red ranking because they are going backwards and there hasn’t seen a big demonstration of wanting change.
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | |
| 100/20 (2026 goal) | 78.4 | 79.96 | 75.99 | 74.6 | 74.5 | 73.76 | 72.89 |
| 25/3 (2022 goal) | 83.31 | 84.88 | 84.66 | 83.67 | 83.66 | 96.31 | 95.92 |
Grants:
- 2107 – New Ulm Telecom, Inc.– Hanska A&D FTTP – GRANT $324,894
- 2016 – New Ulm Telecom, Inc. – Hanska – GRANT: $ 200,397
- 2019: Nuvera Communications, Inc. – New Ulm SW Project – GRANT $385,600
- Minnesota Valley Telephone Company (MVTC) – Rural Franklin Fiber Project – GRANT $226,800. This middle and last mile project will serve approximately 45 unserved locations in the City of Franklin and the townships of Sherman, Eden, Camp and Birch Cooley in Redwood, Renville and Brown counties.
Find more articles on broadband in Brown County. (http://tinyurl.com/z2wwkye)
I am doing the annual look at broadband in each county – based on maps from the Office of Broadband Development and news gathered from the last year. I’m looking at progress toward the 2022 (25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up) and 2026 (100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up) and will code each:
- Red (yikes)
- Yellow (warning)
- Green (good shape)
The maps below on the left comes from the Office of Broadband Development interactive map, reflecting data updated on Oct 31, 2023. Red dots represent locations unserved with wireline broadband; the Orange dots represent underserved locations. The map on the right comes from the FCC National Broadband map showing access to wired and licensed fixed wireless access, the darker the color, the greater percentage of broadband coverage.
